This chapter examines the FBI’s spectacular raids on Japanese communities in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The FBI spectacles anxiously asserted the duplicity of Japanese American suspects by attempting ...
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This chapter examines the FBI’s spectacular raids on Japanese communities in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The FBI spectacles anxiously asserted the duplicity of Japanese American suspects by attempting to pacify the American public with polished, choreographed containment of “the enemy” at home. These raids were very much the stage upon which the FBI sought the American public’s approval for consolidating its national power. But the mimicry between the spectacularity of the FBI’s highly constructed raids and the theatricalized identity of the Japanese American suspects met with dissatisfaction from domestic anti-Japanese factions, who pushed past the FBI’s partial containment of roughly one thousand Japanese Americans by agitating for the wholesale removal of all those of Japanese descent.Less

Spectacularizing Japanese American Suspects : The Genealogy of the FBI’s Post–Pearl Harbor Raids

Emily Roxworthy

Published in print: 2008-07-31

This chapter examines the FBI’s spectacular raids on Japanese communities in the wake of Pearl Harbor. The FBI spectacles anxiously asserted the duplicity of Japanese American suspects by attempting to pacify the American public with polished, choreographed containment of “the enemy” at home. These raids were very much the stage upon which the FBI sought the American public’s approval for consolidating its national power. But the mimicry between the spectacularity of the FBI’s highly constructed raids and the theatricalized identity of the Japanese American suspects met with dissatisfaction from domestic anti-Japanese factions, who pushed past the FBI’s partial containment of roughly one thousand Japanese Americans by agitating for the wholesale removal of all those of Japanese descent.

This chapter traces how a theatricalizing discourse about the Japanese became ingrained in U.S. foreign policy and entrenched in the Western imagination, starting with Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s ...
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This chapter traces how a theatricalizing discourse about the Japanese became ingrained in U.S. foreign policy and entrenched in the Western imagination, starting with Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s spectacular opening of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century. This theatricalizing discourse insisted that Japanese people had long ago traded sincerity for artifice and focused their social and political interactions on the visible, superficial level of highly aesthetic ceremonies and spectacles. Eight decades later, the internment policy would replicate this logic by insisting that Japanese Americans’ claims to U.S. citizenship were merely surface imitations of Americanization that disguised their deep-seated loyalty to the Japanese Empire. The chapter traces this theatricalizing discourse circulated by thinkers in the West about the natural-born actors of Japan from the 1850s up to the present, in which many Anglo-Americans still blithely repeat the long-standing racist stereotype that those of Japanese descent are inherently theatrical people prone to hide their true motives behind a screen of aesthetic display and disguise.Less

Emily Roxworthy

Published in print: 2008-07-31

This chapter traces how a theatricalizing discourse about the Japanese became ingrained in U.S. foreign policy and entrenched in the Western imagination, starting with Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s spectacular opening of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century. This theatricalizing discourse insisted that Japanese people had long ago traded sincerity for artifice and focused their social and political interactions on the visible, superficial level of highly aesthetic ceremonies and spectacles. Eight decades later, the internment policy would replicate this logic by insisting that Japanese Americans’ claims to U.S. citizenship were merely surface imitations of Americanization that disguised their deep-seated loyalty to the Japanese Empire. The chapter traces this theatricalizing discourse circulated by thinkers in the West about the natural-born actors of Japan from the 1850s up to the present, in which many Anglo-Americans still blithely repeat the long-standing racist stereotype that those of Japanese descent are inherently theatrical people prone to hide their true motives behind a screen of aesthetic display and disguise.

This chapter focuses on Kuniyoshi's efforts to demonstrat his allegiance to America following Pearl Harbor. Through a series of public statements he forcefully touted both his American allegiance and ...
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This chapter focuses on Kuniyoshi's efforts to demonstrat his allegiance to America following Pearl Harbor. Through a series of public statements he forcefully touted both his American allegiance and a Japanese American identity infused with an underlying patriotic fervor that, when taken as a whole project, resulted in a nationalistic identity construct that left little room for nuances. Underlying his American boosterism was also the unstated hope for a future America where race relations—particularly those between Japanese Americans and other Americans—would improve because of wartime contributions from loyal immigrants like him. But as the opportunity to contribute with his art to the U.S. anti-Japan graphics propaganda arose, he would resort to a representational strategy aimed at foregrounding a modernist visual rhetoric of universal humanism, instead of grappling with any Japanese or American specificity. Kuniyoshi would devote himself to an intense period of artistic production from which much imagery, with nuance and ambivalence that belie its supposed propagandist simplicity, emerged.Less

Negotiating “Japaneseness”

ShiPu Wang

Published in print: 2011-05-31

This chapter focuses on Kuniyoshi's efforts to demonstrat his allegiance to America following Pearl Harbor. Through a series of public statements he forcefully touted both his American allegiance and a Japanese American identity infused with an underlying patriotic fervor that, when taken as a whole project, resulted in a nationalistic identity construct that left little room for nuances. Underlying his American boosterism was also the unstated hope for a future America where race relations—particularly those between Japanese Americans and other Americans—would improve because of wartime contributions from loyal immigrants like him. But as the opportunity to contribute with his art to the U.S. anti-Japan graphics propaganda arose, he would resort to a representational strategy aimed at foregrounding a modernist visual rhetoric of universal humanism, instead of grappling with any Japanese or American specificity. Kuniyoshi would devote himself to an intense period of artistic production from which much imagery, with nuance and ambivalence that belie its supposed propagandist simplicity, emerged.

By taking the examples of translations associated with “race” and “class” used in early Japanese American history, this chapter calls attention to the changes of the meaning and associated ...
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By taking the examples of translations associated with “race” and “class” used in early Japanese American history, this chapter calls attention to the changes of the meaning and associated epistemological transformations through the translation of these terms from Japanese to English. It also provides the historical context in which Japanese American studies developed in Japan and discusses the strength and weakness of the field in Japan and in the United States with focus given to such issues as subject matter, production of knowledge, and socio-political context.Less

Shifting Grounds in Japanese American Studies : Reconsidering “Race” and “Class” in a Trans-Pacific Geopolitical-Historical Context

Yasuko Takezawa

Published in print: 2016-09-30

By taking the examples of translations associated with “race” and “class” used in early Japanese American history, this chapter calls attention to the changes of the meaning and associated epistemological transformations through the translation of these terms from Japanese to English. It also provides the historical context in which Japanese American studies developed in Japan and discusses the strength and weakness of the field in Japan and in the United States with focus given to such issues as subject matter, production of knowledge, and socio-political context.

In the 1960s and 1970s, third-generation Japanese American (Sansei) women in southern California began to challenge gendered racializations in both the ethnic community and the larger society. As ...
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In the 1960s and 1970s, third-generation Japanese American (Sansei) women in southern California began to challenge gendered racializations in both the ethnic community and the larger society. As activists in the Asian American movement, they criticized stereotypical images of Asian/Americans, using the arts to create new representations, as they drew inspiration from Asian women engaged in revolutionary struggle. They also organized women’s groups to address community issues such as childcare access, seniors’ health, drug abuse, and workers’ rights. Sansei women not only assessed their position in U.S. society but also debated their relationship to Japan. Their experiences show the persisting significance of gender in the racialization of Japanese Americans as well as the ways in which women’s critique of gender expectations helped to shape the Asian American movement.Less

Sansei Women and the Gendering of Yellow Power in Southern California, 1960s–1970s

Valerie J. Matsumoto

Published in print: 2016-09-30

In the 1960s and 1970s, third-generation Japanese American (Sansei) women in southern California began to challenge gendered racializations in both the ethnic community and the larger society. As activists in the Asian American movement, they criticized stereotypical images of Asian/Americans, using the arts to create new representations, as they drew inspiration from Asian women engaged in revolutionary struggle. They also organized women’s groups to address community issues such as childcare access, seniors’ health, drug abuse, and workers’ rights. Sansei women not only assessed their position in U.S. society but also debated their relationship to Japan. Their experiences show the persisting significance of gender in the racialization of Japanese Americans as well as the ways in which women’s critique of gender expectations helped to shape the Asian American movement.

This chapter reconstructs the patriotic pageantry that the Hearst media empire staged in its newspaper pages and on city streets across the United States and argues that these pageants downplayed the ...
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This chapter reconstructs the patriotic pageantry that the Hearst media empire staged in its newspaper pages and on city streets across the United States and argues that these pageants downplayed the coercive spectacularity of their stagings by showcasing the myth of performative citizenship. It demonstrates how William Randolph Hearst, as a metonym for the centralized power and influence of media magnates in this era, staged his own patriotic spectacles so as to exclude Japanese Americans from such assertions of loyalty to the United States and reiterate instead the other’s theatrical duplicity. The interplay between the myth of performative citizenship and the spectacularization of Japanese suspiciousness—a dual movement defined as racial performativity—yielded a repetitive melodrama in the Hearst pages throughout the six months in which the military evacuated Japanese Americans from the West Coast. The chapter shows how Hearst’s wartime coverage of the West Coast’s so-called Japanese problem punctuated his five decades of anti-Asian propaganda and deployed melodramatic film techniques gleaned from Hearst’s Pathé studio in order to offer a compelling narrative in favor of the internment of Japanese Americans. Once the internment was under way, Hearst’s pages constructed the evacuation as a benign field trip for Japanese Americans, a farcical spectacle that insisted upon the playfulness of U.S. internment camps, in contrast to the racist seriousness of Nazi concentration camps abroad. Such coverage obscured the internment’s violent import and traumatized Japanese Americans by compelling them to “miss” the event of their own disenfranchisement.Less

Emily Roxworthy

Published in print: 2008-07-31

This chapter reconstructs the patriotic pageantry that the Hearst media empire staged in its newspaper pages and on city streets across the United States and argues that these pageants downplayed the coercive spectacularity of their stagings by showcasing the myth of performative citizenship. It demonstrates how William Randolph Hearst, as a metonym for the centralized power and influence of media magnates in this era, staged his own patriotic spectacles so as to exclude Japanese Americans from such assertions of loyalty to the United States and reiterate instead the other’s theatrical duplicity. The interplay between the myth of performative citizenship and the spectacularization of Japanese suspiciousness—a dual movement defined as racial performativity—yielded a repetitive melodrama in the Hearst pages throughout the six months in which the military evacuated Japanese Americans from the West Coast. The chapter shows how Hearst’s wartime coverage of the West Coast’s so-called Japanese problem punctuated his five decades of anti-Asian propaganda and deployed melodramatic film techniques gleaned from Hearst’s Pathé studio in order to offer a compelling narrative in favor of the internment of Japanese Americans. Once the internment was under way, Hearst’s pages constructed the evacuation as a benign field trip for Japanese Americans, a farcical spectacle that insisted upon the playfulness of U.S. internment camps, in contrast to the racist seriousness of Nazi concentration camps abroad. Such coverage obscured the internment’s violent import and traumatized Japanese Americans by compelling them to “miss” the event of their own disenfranchisement.

Begun as a conversation among scholars of Japanese American studies in Japan and the United States, Transpacific Japanese American Studies is conceived of as an engagement across national archives, ...
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Begun as a conversation among scholars of Japanese American studies in Japan and the United States, Transpacific Japanese American Studies is conceived of as an engagement across national archives, literatures, and subject positions to excavate personal investments, epistemologies, and social contexts. Is it possible to achieve a truly equal exchange in a field that defines itself as “Japanese American” studies and in a conversation conducted mainly in the English language? All of the contributors to this volume were asked to consider those foundational questions, and most discussed their subjectivities and work over the course of several years in meetings held in Japan and the US. The outcome, Transpacific Japanese American Studies, is a candid, self-conscious appraisal of scholars and their subject positions and personal and political investments.Less

Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies : Conversations on Race and Racializations

Published in print: 2016-09-30

Begun as a conversation among scholars of Japanese American studies in Japan and the United States, Transpacific Japanese American Studies is conceived of as an engagement across national archives, literatures, and subject positions to excavate personal investments, epistemologies, and social contexts. Is it possible to achieve a truly equal exchange in a field that defines itself as “Japanese American” studies and in a conversation conducted mainly in the English language? All of the contributors to this volume were asked to consider those foundational questions, and most discussed their subjectivities and work over the course of several years in meetings held in Japan and the US. The outcome, Transpacific Japanese American Studies, is a candid, self-conscious appraisal of scholars and their subject positions and personal and political investments.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book’s main themes. This book posits the importance of understanding the structural trauma of internment as located in the spectacularization ...
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This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book’s main themes. This book posits the importance of understanding the structural trauma of internment as located in the spectacularization imposed upon Japanese Americans by the U.S. government and mass media during World War II. By spectacularizing the disenfranchisement and imprisonment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans, the U.S. government and mass media denied the gravity of what was taking place and disavowed the psychological suffering and material violence perpetrated against a persecuted ethnic minority. The book further argues that by framing the evacuation and internment as spectacles, the United States positioned the American public as passive spectators to the unconstitutional treatment of their ethnic Japanese neighbors and, simultaneously, cast the public as heroic “patriots” opposite Japanese Americans, who were cast in one of two thankless roles: expressionless automata or melodramatic villains.Less

Introduction : Staging the Trauma of Japanese American Internment

Emily Roxworthy

Published in print: 2008-07-31

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book’s main themes. This book posits the importance of understanding the structural trauma of internment as located in the spectacularization imposed upon Japanese Americans by the U.S. government and mass media during World War II. By spectacularizing the disenfranchisement and imprisonment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans, the U.S. government and mass media denied the gravity of what was taking place and disavowed the psychological suffering and material violence perpetrated against a persecuted ethnic minority. The book further argues that by framing the evacuation and internment as spectacles, the United States positioned the American public as passive spectators to the unconstitutional treatment of their ethnic Japanese neighbors and, simultaneously, cast the public as heroic “patriots” opposite Japanese Americans, who were cast in one of two thankless roles: expressionless automata or melodramatic villains.

This chapter explores the self-conscious construction of Japanese American identities and the internment experience in the internee-run Manzanar Free Press, which epitomized the camp newspapers ...
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This chapter explores the self-conscious construction of Japanese American identities and the internment experience in the internee-run Manzanar Free Press, which epitomized the camp newspapers independently published in each of the ten relocation centers. In the face of political spectacularization and racist media slander, internee journalists drew attention to a “spectacle-archive,” recording the ambivalent scrutiny imposed upon them from all sides. At the same time, internees staged intercultural performing arts festivals that defied the U.S. government’s mono-Americanist assimilation policy, which pitted second-generation Nisei against their “Japanesey” Issei parents and criminalized displays of Japanese culture. For internee audiences these intercultural performances made visible the contradictions of American racial performativity. Unfortunately, the fact that this performed resistance lives on mainly through embodied memory has meant that progressive narratives of America’s triumph over adversity—epitomized by the U.S. National Park Service’s celebration of internees’ festivity at Manzanar National Historic Site—have appropriated only the “model minority” interpretation of camp performing arts as rehearsals for assimilation and accommodationist endorsements of U.S. policy.Less

“Manzanar, the Eyes of the World Are upon You” : Internee Performance and Archival Ambivalence

Emily Roxworthy

Published in print: 2008-07-31

This chapter explores the self-conscious construction of Japanese American identities and the internment experience in the internee-run Manzanar Free Press, which epitomized the camp newspapers independently published in each of the ten relocation centers. In the face of political spectacularization and racist media slander, internee journalists drew attention to a “spectacle-archive,” recording the ambivalent scrutiny imposed upon them from all sides. At the same time, internees staged intercultural performing arts festivals that defied the U.S. government’s mono-Americanist assimilation policy, which pitted second-generation Nisei against their “Japanesey” Issei parents and criminalized displays of Japanese culture. For internee audiences these intercultural performances made visible the contradictions of American racial performativity. Unfortunately, the fact that this performed resistance lives on mainly through embodied memory has meant that progressive narratives of America’s triumph over adversity—epitomized by the U.S. National Park Service’s celebration of internees’ festivity at Manzanar National Historic Site—have appropriated only the “model minority” interpretation of camp performing arts as rehearsals for assimilation and accommodationist endorsements of U.S. policy.

The Introduction explains how the book was generated through a series of dialogues between Japan- and US-based scholars held in Japan and the US. Those engagements highlighted what the contributors ...
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The Introduction explains how the book was generated through a series of dialogues between Japan- and US-based scholars held in Japan and the US. Those engagements highlighted what the contributors considered to be the subject matters and issues at stake in the field called “Japanese American studies.” While tracing the field’s literature and its past achievements in each country, the authors point out the field’s neglect in accounting for the subject positions, political commitments, and historical and social contexts of scholars and their consequences for their choice of subject matters and approaches to Japanese American studies. Finally, the Introduction describes the book’s structure and offers a brief summary of each chapter.Less

Introduction

Yasuko TakezawaGary Y. Okihiro

Published in print: 2016-09-30

The Introduction explains how the book was generated through a series of dialogues between Japan- and US-based scholars held in Japan and the US. Those engagements highlighted what the contributors considered to be the subject matters and issues at stake in the field called “Japanese American studies.” While tracing the field’s literature and its past achievements in each country, the authors point out the field’s neglect in accounting for the subject positions, political commitments, and historical and social contexts of scholars and their consequences for their choice of subject matters and approaches to Japanese American studies. Finally, the Introduction describes the book’s structure and offers a brief summary of each chapter.